Sense of Place lecture Nov. 6 with Rick McClure

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Gorge Owned (GO!) kicks off of its fourth-annual Sense of Place lecture series on Wednesday, Nov. 6, with archaeologist Rick McClure. McClure, heritage program manager for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, will discuss the role of the 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps in shaping the landscape and architecture of public lands in the Gorge.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation put more than a million and a half people to work through the CCC during the Great Depression. McClure’s presentation will draw upon his oral history interviews with CCC enrollees, archival research and archaeological investigations of CCC camps in Washington and Oregon.

McClure and his wife, Cheryl Mack, live in Trout Lake, Wash., and authored the book, “For the Greatest Good: Early History of Gifford Pinchot National Forest.”

McClure will speak at the Columbia Center for the Arts. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the lecture begins at 7 p.m. Suggested donation $5; free for GO! members.

Sense of Place is an annual lecture series sponsored by Gorge Owned that seeks to foster a deeper understanding of and connection to our landscape and to one other. GO! thanks all of the sponsors who support this community-building lecture series, including Hood River Valley Residents Committee, Zepher and Cascade Acupuncture Center.